I have always read it as what it obviously is: a loop. As with Weldon Kees' Back. The element of return-to-go in poetry always recalls to me the sources of verse and its turnings in the round-dance.

Greek: terma=a turning.

And speaking of turning points, I have long thought of this period in Williams' work as pivotal in several respects. Obviously a poet so bound into the observation of reality in the practice of his art was not going to be missing the social reality. My speculation has been that the issues of the time, so bleakly immediate, challenged the poet with procedural questions as to the use (or refusal) of allegory, a mode often present, if subtly, if well beneath the surface, in his work up to this time. And perhaps not so much, in the phases that ensued.

Does this poem stand for anything besides itself, or is it entirely self-referential?